Abstract:The aim of this research is to classify and model manufacturing knowledge required by process planning. The relationship between manufacturing knowledge and process planning is analyzed. According to roles of manufacturing knowledge in process planning, manufacturing knowledge is categorized into three classes which are manufacturing resource class, artifact class and manufacturing process class. A hierarchical model of manufacturing knowledge is constructed that is consisted of part level, attribute level and database level. Taking manufacturing equipment as a case, an expressive model of manufacturing knowledge is set up by using IDEF1X method.